Stratum Boss
Stratum Boss is a very powerful kind of monster in the series. As the name suggests, it is often the most powerful monster fought on its home stratum. They are depicted the same way as the FOEs, but instead of a orange/red ball, their color is black. Also, each game has different music for the boss battles. Etrian Odyssey IV and the Untold games instead mark the boss with a purple ring, and occasionally they may come surrounded with a 3x3 purple grid which causes battle to be initiated if the player even enters those tiles. These monsters, although not always, are most of the time fought on the last floor of said stratum, and will be the last trial the player will face before going further into the labyrinth. They will remain stationary, and the first battle the player will face against said enemy is a mandatory, unnavoidable fight. Its power is often far bigger than any monster or FOE you faced this far, and often poses a great challenge to the party, often requiring better strategies or bigger preparations by the player. Another thing that sets these monsters apart from others is their respawn time. While normal FOEs usually take 3 or 7 days, these bosses take 12–15 days to return to life. Etrian Odyssey/Etrian Odyssey Untold Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard/Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan Etrian Odyssy V: Beyond the Myth Etrian Odyssey Nexus Trivia * Every one of the first stratum bosses of the series (Fenrir, Chimaera, Narmer, and Berserker King) use minions of some kind to help them in battle. *Cotrangl is the only boss of the original games who doesn't use any minions in battle. *Azure Rainforest is the only stratum on the series that has two different stratum bosses on it. Although Abyssal Shrine also has two bosses, you can only fight one of them per playthrough. *You have to fight the Yggdrasil Core (the boss of Claret Hollows) twice in Story Mode before the postgame: the first time with the Yggdra Virus received from Visil, the second with Kupala's aid. *Oceanmaster Ketos is the first Stratum Boss to have the sentience of a person instead of that of an animal. In fact, he might be the only boss with that criteria (other than possibly the Hollow Queen, but her case is unknown). *In Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold, the Holy Grail has been confirmed to give consumers of the Elixir regeneration powers so strong that they revive several days after their death, no matter how badly they are wounded; this references the respawning of its Stratum Bosses (the game also states that adventurers are having problems with the Hellion, since she's been said to keep coming back). The respawning is also referenced in Etrian Odyssey 3 (if the player sides with the Deep City); immediately after destroying the Gatekeeper and completing (technically failing) the mission to prevent the Senatus's forces from reaching the 4th Stratum, if you talk to Seyfried before advancing further into the Stratum, he will state that Armoroad's Yggdrasil Tree will create a new Gatekeeper later on. Category:Game mechanics